I against I

  “We’re far from done,” said Michael. “We still o expin to him what the job entails.

  “Shooting people,” said Luke.

  “Not all the time,” said Lindsey.

  “Oh yeah, stopping other people from shooting someone.”

  “Also not—” started Lindsey.

  “If we’re gonna go over all the operations and shit, I wan some food,” Philip said, walking to the kit. Luke paused the game and stretched.

  “Yep. I’m hungry as hell.”

  “All right, let's head out back.” Michael stood up and everyone else followed. Some of them mixed cocktails on the ter rabbed drinks out of the fridge. Philip took out a ptter of dry brieaks and headed out the door behind Michael.

  Gradie walked through the kit and the espresso mae caught his eye. It was the same model he had seen floating through the void in hilip had called “Michael’s little video”. It was just as jarring to see it here, smudged in spots and gring under imperfect lighting, as it had been to see Michael and EP in normal clothes, moving through a real world like solid echoes. Sam interrupted his reverie by stomping out of the pantry with a bag of chips and a of dip.

  “Coffee bar is closed. The barista is snag.” She nudged past him and out the back door. He followed her in a reflex, watg the surands of her hair to golden fire, but stopped as he passed the dining room.

  There was a long dining table, covered in cases, bags, guns, magazines, scopes, and other things he couldn’t identify. Fun safes against the far wall hung zily open, with other boxes and cases stacked alongside. A rge scoped rifle that might have been an HK 417 was leaned against the near edge of the table. Its form had the same effe him as the espresso mae, reminding him of that other world. The sensation of that other existence poured out from somewhere in the back of his mind and sloshed around the sharp reality in front of him; the light and sounds streaming in from out back, the subtle smell of espresso, the hard lines on the rifle’s Piny rail.

  “We’ll py with those ter, kid. ,” Philip yelled from outside.

  Gradie stepped out onto the covered tile porch where most of the team had already fous among the mismatched outdoor lounge chairs. Philip was at the rge e gas grill built into the outdoor kit, firing it up and arranging the steaks on the ter. There was anrill under a cover, a massive double-doored wood smoker at the end of the ter, and twe coolers and a wok station off to the side.

  The crete deck of an L-shaped pool surrouhe por two sides. U grass poked and bowed through the sbs at the far edge. The yard had no fence, and the grass sloped down and away into scratchy woodnd where bright limestone and the e cy of a storm ditch peeked through the trees in colors fueled by the high Texas sun. Far beyond the dusty grey-green haze, blue faces of the downtown skyline shimmered over sand-colored highways. A pne drew a soft white line across the sky, where silver and ste-colored clouds stood waiting, ready to do anything.

  “Nice view, huh?” said Michael. Gradie nodded and leaned on one of the support pilrs.

  Looking out at the skyline, he felt the world shift. It was like the sensation of ing into the neighborhood, but hopeful and energized with a forward momentum, like driving to a friend’s house for the weekend. Aement for somethi unknown.

  His giddiness must have shown on his face. Lindsey smiled at him slyly.

  “Feels goht? The pull?”

  “What’s that?”

  “An illusion,” said Phillip. Lindsey ignored him.

  “It’s the feeling of excitement, possibility. The mind’s rea to existing in a pce that will listen to it. It’s a kind of euphoria uo the Hardworlds. It's why a lot of us keep ing back, despite the dangers.”

  “Some of us actually enjoy the dangers,” said Philip as he dropped a steak on the grill.

  “Speaking of danger,” said Michael. “We o go over what the job is like.”

  “Fun as fuck,” said Luke, id ba a long cushioned lounger fag the pool. He held his gss up to the sky and watched sunlight fre off the facets of the carved diamond-shaped piece of id the amber whiskey that rolled around it.

  “Not all the time,” said EP, sitting cross-legged on a reing lounger. “It’s a lot of waiting.” She flicked her thumb across her phone and a drone whizzed by somewhere above the awning.

  “Do you knoe go into the Hardworlds, usually?” Michael asked.

  “To catch Demons,” Gradie said, and instantly regretted it. Whoever didn’t ugh looked offended or embarrassed to be o subridled stupidity.

  “Not for a minute, kid,” said Philip. We wouldn’t be having a fug cookout if those bastards were still moving around.”

  “We catch fugitives,” said Michael. “Who flee into the Hardworlds. Or we defend them from people trying to catch them, depending on the t.”

  “So, you help criminals sometimes?” Gradie asked.

  “It ain’t like the Real,” Philip said, “Where everyone’s generally on one side of the w or the other. There is no w iherworld, just payment. And public opinion, so to speak.”

  “We don’t defend the same kind of criminals that we hunt,” said Michael. “When we’re hired to drop someo, the t gives us a reason, and we check it with our sources. None of that process s you, but just know we have agehat let us know what kind of people we’re after.”

  “So, how does killing someone do anything?” said Gradie. “’t they just go into another Hardworld? Like one where they didn’t die?” He tried to get a handle on the model of the Hardworlds f in his head.

  “Remember when I said that altered states of sciousness let your spirit travel? Well, when you die, you drop directly into the Otherworld.”

  Gradie leaned bad tried to put it all together. Sam set some rocks gsses filled with ice down on the small round side table o him, along with a bottle of Jameson.

  “Here’s a wele to the team drink, buddy,” she said. Gradie felt his cheeks warm.

  “I want him to remember this, Sam,” said Michael.

  “Drink slowly.” She poured the drink ahe bottle on the side table, then sat down with her gss and started making ‘tch’ sounds until Bojo came out through a fp in the back door.

  Gradie took a drink and rolled his uanding of the job around in his head.

  “Why don’t you just take them out when they’re dreaming then?” he asked. “Didn’t Celeste say she could do that?”

  “She go into their dreams, yes,” Michael said. “But the dreamworlds are very secure, like the Otherworld. If we try to fight them there, they just push us out, or if we do catch them, wake themselves up. And not all of us have the ability to get inside dreamworlds unbeed.”

  Gradie rolled his ice around while he thought about that, aually decided to just ig.

  “So, when we kill them, they go to the Otherworld, right? What’s to stop them from going right ba?”

  “That’s when they get captured.”

  “How?”

  “Not your job! Let’s move on!” yelled Philip, as the sizzling sound got louder and moved through variations of rhythm.

  “He’s right,” Michael said. “We have enough to cover without going over things you won’t be involved in. Anyway, the vast majority of our jobs are going to fall into two categories: Dropping someo, or keeping someone from dropping out. So—”

  “What other kind of jobs are there?” asked Gradie.

  “Fuck me,” said Philip.

  “He’s curious, unlike you, Mr. B,” said Sam. Gradie looked at her, but she never made eye tact, just kept staring out at the horizon like something was calling to her in the haze.

  “Well,” Michael said. “Some people hire Hardworlders to ge a world to their specifications.”

  “Like make them a millionaire?” Gradie asked.

  “Exactly. Or ge world politics, or—”

  “A bunch of b douchebag shit!” Philip said. Luke ughed.

  “Yeah, shits me. Hiring astral warriors to alter reality just so some dude you don’t know get elected.”

  “They might want to live in a better world. Did you think of that?” said Lindsey, flig ash past her foot before bringing the cigarette back up to her lips. Luke smiled at her.

  “How many guys like me and Philip you think it would take t about world peace?”

  Lindsey leaned her head bad bleerfect sm into the air. Philip shut the grill and came over with a drink in hand and a cigar already lit.

  “There are also retrievals,” Michael tinued. “It is possible to take objects—”

  “Where're the steaks?!” Luke yelled.

  “They gotta rest,” said Philip.

  “Fuck that. Shits a myth!”

  “Get it yourself then!”

  Luke stayed where he was and finished off the cigar. Gradie was staring over at the ter where the steaks were resting, Michaels words rolling off his hunger-emboldened buzz, when his pho off. The drink almost slipped out of his hand.

  “Shit.” He sat up and banged his gss down oable, then dug around in his pocket.

  “It’s your baby mama,” Luke said, waving his hand like a jedi mind trick.

  It was his sister. Her name floated off the s and stirred up a flurry of memories that pushed the electric feeling of everything else out beyond his reach.

  “Shit.”

  “A,” said Michael.

  Gradie tapped the s without breathing.

  “Hello?”

  “Gradie! Oh my god, what the fuck is going on! The cops just called saying they found your car on fire. Where are you?”

  Gradie sed the faces around him, looking for ao his sister's questions. Who were these people? He tried to ect his memories to the events of the day, but they missed each other and bounced around in his head. The world spun. Michael, whoever he was, stood up and watched Gradie like he was ready to pouhe rest of the people set their drinks down, or stood up, or moved out of the way. Suddenly, Gradie remembered them.

  They were drug addicts, deviants, and the ically deluded. Victims of a colpsed mental health system that had never made the jump from the asylums to whatever should have followed, but instead had slipped down into greasy darkness, taking millions of people with it. Somehow, they had sold him a story desig him into their own delusions. When did he meet them? The questiht out half-remembered halluations of floating things and an endless void, then something else. A party at a house clogged with the pstic, paper, and cotton refuse of a life lived at the edge of poverty and beyond the realm of hope. He had leaned against a smoke yellowed wall, over a mound of tied up Wal Mart bags holding bursting bundles of socks, shirts, toys, and scraps of nothing, talking to a girl as the broken world writhed around him, looking for a smile to tell him it would all be worth it in a matter of minutes.

  They had been there, smiling at him, preag at him, drawing him into their story with an unnatural and of the storm ing around them. That spiraling, sug whirlpool, like murky day-old dishwater swirling downward after a clog freshly obliterated by a disposal. A ‘party’. The groaning terminus of broken lives. A sinking spinning thing, taking them all somewhere fast, that only they knew how to ride.

  Now here he was, throwing his life away for the delusions of the mentally ill.

  “Gradie?” his sister’s voice crackled through the air. He stepped bad Michael put a hand up. Philip waved with a smile.

  “Bye-bye, kid.”

  “Shut up,” Lindsey snapped.

  “He’s outta here,” said Philip.

  Gradie took aep back. He had to do something, or these people would bury him out in the woodnd. Probably cut him up ihtub. Like they had doh whoever was living or squatting here before them.

  He looked down at his phone, and froze. A memory floated up through the panic, of another phone call ho, and watg his car burn to ash and sludge. A voice screamed, but another whispered.

  Hardworlder.

  He threw the pho the pool and it skipped once before dropping below the glittery surface, being a ed parallelogram-shaped shadow sliding towards the bottom.

  He colpsed into the chair and looked back at the team. Everyo Michael looked fused.

  “Good job Gradie. You just avoided dropping out.”

  “I thought y’all were meth heads I met at a party.”

  “Oh yeah, that was a good one,” said Philip with a smile.

  “You remember it?” Gradie asked, spilling his drink.

  “Yeah, now that you pushed it.”

  “Wait, I pushed memory?”

  “Your self did,” Michael corrected. “Your mind will try and recile your memories with your past, if you let it. It rationalized our versation as drug-induced ravings. Sometimes it's ag, or role-pying. Remember, the self wants to stay in the Hardworld, and to dissolve the spirit into itself.”

  Gradie had thought of his selfs as mannequins or es he slipped into. Michael speaking about them as if they were alive sent a chill crawling up his neck.

  “Normally, on a job, the rest of the team will have already pushed enough memory that it will be impossible for your selfs to have ever met, to avoid being tracked. But this time I wao leave you out iide. See how you did.” Michael’s smile was the best gratutions Gradie had ever gotten.

  “How did you get out of it?” EP asked.

  “Uh, I just remembered how it felt before. How certain I was it was real, I guess.” Gradie flushed and reached for the bottle.

  “Good job bud.” Luke patted him on the bad headed towards the outdoor kit.

  “Where’s the greenery, Philip?” said Sam as she walked up to the ter.

  “There’s mint in the fridge if you want a mojito or something.”

  “With the steaks, idiot! It’s your turn! You have to make sides too!”

  “There’s potato sad right there!”

  “Oh my God!” She slid open the back door.

  “What, are you worried about your health?”

  “It’s for my soul, Philip!” She yelled from the kit.

  Gradie sliced into his perfectly medium-rare steak and looked back out at the fshing skyscrapers on the horizon, weaker forms of the crystal towers and suspended water pilrs floating above another world. He watched himself gun down targets in a thousand different lives while another voice, rambling about family and jail time, died in the background. He took a bite of the steak, and his Spirit savored the fvor.

  I see in spirit that all are hung, I know in spirit that all are borne,

  Flesh hanging from soul, Soul ging to air,

  Air hanging from upper atmosphere. - Valentinus, Summer Harvest.

  Could you leave it all behind? ime, a simple test, and the end of a long day. Episode: Anamnesis